gmonahan

Sometimes Darwin Award candidates are saved in spite of themselves.

After a recommendation here on the Board

I agree. I didn't know much about it before I went (except that Mirren was playing the lead). I was surprised at the focus on the '73 war, but thought she was very good indeed. Watched Denzel slaughter bad guys last night in Equalizer 3. With those movies, you get exactly what you expect.

Nice Sammy Nestico arrangements, and Capp propels the band very well.

Every time I hear (or in this rare case, see) Rosolino play a solo, I can't figure out how the hell he did it. I played trombone through high school, and I wasn't bad, but not in my wildest of dreams and with a zillion hears of practice do I think I could have played like that. It's said that when he was young, Jack Teagarden (whom I couldn't emulate either) couldn't reach all the positions on the instrument and used his lips to "relocate" notes on the closer positions. I wonder if Frank did that too?

Yeah, that's a bizarre one! One of the few that has never been reissued on cd! I'm listening to this one, which I got after reading about it here on the board:

We've had several threads on Kenton over the years. I remember seeing him playing at a high school in Iowa back around 1970. I think Dick Shearer was still playing trombone with the band then. I got his autograph! (Hey, I was in high school!) He was, if memory serves, very generous in sharing his arrangements with high school jazz bands and was a big booster of big band jazz in general. I like a lot of the 50s Capitol stuff, especially the arrangements by Holman and Russo that Mosaic put into a now long out of print set. Your mileage may vary, but in the right mood, I like listening to him. And Rosolino played with him for a while, and I do love Frank's trombone. He also employed some great singers, including June Christy, Anita O'Day, and Chris Connor. I'd rate them as "A listers" among jazz singers.

Been a while since I listened to this one. All three great artists at the top of their game.

I use a kindle. It's easy to download ebooks onto it from the library. Except for jazz books, I try very hard not to buy books. I once had a huge library, and the thought of moving it to where I am now was too awful to contemplate, so I got rid of most of my books. But cds? Moved every last one of 'em! I have worked hard--mostly successfully--to slow down my buying in the last year or so, though this board can be very bad for that intention! Just today, I saw a 2-cd set discussed here, and the devil on one shoulder got me to order it before the angel on my other shoulder woke up to stop me. Sigh.

Here are a couple with Foster and one among many with Mitchell:

Rereading it I can see how you'd see it that way! All that said, though, damn, what an album!

No Dan, I've owned Blue Train first in vinyl, then in its first cd, then in the "enhanced" cd. The radio snippet just reminded me I hadn't listened to it in a while! Sorry if I gave you that *very* mistaken impression!

Me too. Like all the Woofy things. Speaking of Cathy Rich, I wonder if she has any of the tapes supposedly made at her dad's nightclub on 52nd street back in the 70s?

I like some of the things the Basie Orchestra did when Frank Foster and Grover Mitchell took it over.

Heard a snippet of this one on Real Jazz on the radio and decided to give it a listen. What a great album this is!

Yes.

Re Jim's comment--Jay Corre was indeed a very fine saxophonist, and I second his affection for Corre's work with Rich. As for James's commercial stuff, that's what put the dollar sign on the trumpet, and frankly, I love it. He had amazingly beautiful tone. I think I remember reading somewhere that James was one of Miles Davis's favorite trumpeters! He apparently liked James's tone too. It really is remarkable that he kept a band going as long as he did, and even more interesting that Buddy Rich apparently liked playing with him. I'm sure James paid him well, but the chemistry must have just been right. Edited to add that the version of "Walk on the Wild Side" on the video sounded so much like the Rich Pacific Jazz band that I pulled out those cds to see if he'd recorded it!

Yes, that's the comp album I was thinking of in my previous post. It had Buddy Rich on drums. Jim was more accurate than I was in noting that James recorded for MGM, not Verve. Verve *reissued* some of that early 60s MGM stuff. There's another compilation of MGM things in this one:

James made some great records for Capitol and Verve in the fifties. Mosaic gathered the Capitol material in a now-out-of-print set. The Verve stuff has never been properly reissued, though there's a pretty good compilation disc, and Avid put out a 2-cd set with four of the "off label" things, but you're right. Harry James seldom put out a bad record.

I still wish someone would put together all the Mercer recordings in one set!

I think the only people guaranteed to get a set in the first batch these days are those who preorder.

I've always gone back and forth on Wynton. On the one hand, like others, I did like his early stuff, and I do admire his deep devotion to the history of the music and his efforts at JATLC to make more people aware of it, but his hubris drives me away from his own projects. I recently tried watching the Burns series again, and found myself--again--fast forwarding through Wynton's endless babbling. He needs to put a small group together and go out on the road and just play. Maybe that would give him some much needed perspective??

As was I. A great series with some fine, fine music.

That's the period when she recorded several albums for Mainstream, and those aren't always easy to find. I liked the one she did with Jimmy Rowles for that label, and the 2-cd Live in Tokyo is pretty good if you can find it.

Excellent choice!!